Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel (48 page)

Next there was a glass cube containing a doll’s head with curly hair—as small and wrinkled as a newborn baby’s.

“That is from the island of New Guinea,” the count explained. “A smoked head. Not really a great rarity—there are plenty like it in European collections—but this one is remarkable because I was, so to speak, personally acquainted with this lady.”

“How’s that?”

“She had committed an offense, broken some taboo or other, and for that she had to be killed. I was a witness to the killing and also to the subsequent smoking process—in fact it was shorter than usual, because according to the rules the process ought to take several months, but I could not afford to wait so long. I was warned quite honestly that my souvenir might spoil after a few years. But so far all is well, it is surviving.”

“And you did nothing to try to save this unfortunate woman?”

“Who am I to interfere with the administration of justice, even aboriginal justice?”

They walked up to a large display case in which little bags of various sizes with leather drawstrings were displayed on the shelves.

“What are these?” asked Matvei Bentsionovich, failing to find anything interesting in the exhibits. “They look like tobacco pouches.”

“They are pouches. Made by the Indians of the American Wild West. Do you not notice anything special? Take a closer look.”

The magnate opened the door, took out one of the pouches, and handed it to his guest, who turned the object in his hands, marveling at how thin and soft the leather was. There was nothing else remarkable about it—no pattern, no embossed work. Except that at the center there was something like a little button. He looked at it closely, and then tossed the pouch back onto the shelf in horror.

“Yes, yes,” His Excellency clucked. “It is a nipple. The warriors of certain Indian tribes have the delightful custom of bringing back men’s scalps and women’s breasts from a raid. But there are even more startling trophies.”

He took something that looked like a bunch of dried mushrooms off a shelf: a series of dark rings, some of them with little hairs, threaded on a string.

“This is from the jungles of Brazil. I visited a certain forest people who were at war with those brutish, bloodthirsty female warriors, the Amazons, whom, thank goodness, they later exterminated completely. I bought this garland from their most valiant hero, who had personally killed eleven Amazons. See, there are exactly eleven rings here.”

“But what are the rings?” the slow-witted Berdichevsky asked, then suddenly felt sick as he realized the answer.

A gong boomed quietly somewhere in the depths of the house. “The hors d’oeuvres are ready,” the count declared, breaking off the terrifying excursion. “Shall we?”

After what he had just seen, the public prosecutor was not really in the mood for hors d’oeuvres, but he replied hastily, “Thank you, with pleasure.”

Anything at all to get out of this room.

The wolf driven into the pit

IN THE HALL next door, the dining room (a perfectly normal one, thank God, with no smoked heads or dried genitals), Matvei Bentsionovich drained two glasses of wine one after the other before he could rid himself of the repulsive trembling in his fingers. He ate a grape. His stomach convulsed, but it was all right, it withstood the test.

Kesha bolted down stuffed quails as if nothing unusual had happened. The count himself did not touch the food, he merely took a sip of cognac and immediately lit up a cigar.

“Well, then, so there is
society
in Zavolzhsk?” he asked, pronouncing the word in a way that made it quite clear exactly what kind of society was intended.

“Not very numerous, but there is,” Berdichevsky replied, preparing to lie.

Charnokutsky asked several more questions with lively interest, some of which the Zavolzhian did not understand at all. What could “Do you have a spring chick farm?” mean? Or “Do you organize a carousel?” The devil only knew what sort of carousel was meant. Some kind of filthy pederasts’ perversion.

In order to avoid being exposed, the public prosecutor decided to seize the initiative. “I was very impressed by your collection,” he said, changing the subject. “Tell me, why do you only collect… er … er … the remains of the fair half of the human race?”

“Woman is not the fair half of the human race, she is not even a half at all,” the count snapped. “She is a cheap caricature of a human being. I tell you this as a medical man. An ugly, absurd creature! Mammary glands like jellyfish, cushions of fat in the pelvis, an absurd skeletal structure, a squeaky voice …”

Charnokutsky shuddered in disgust.

Aha
, thought Matvei Bentsionovich,
you might be a medical man, but
there’s a hospital ward just crying out for you. The kind that is locked from the outside
.

“I beg your pardon, but it is not possible to manage entirely without women,” he protested mildly. “If only from the point of view of continuing the human race.”

The count was not floored by his argument. “A special strain should be bred from the most fertile of them, the way they do with cows and farrowing sows. Kept in a barn. And fertilized, of course, by using a syringe, and in no other way.” A tremor of revulsion ran across the misogynist’s face.

Is he mocking me?
thought Berdichevsky, suddenly doubtful.
Is he playing the fool? Never mind—damn this psychopath’s idiotic theories. It’s time to get down to business
.

“How marvelous it would be to live in an exclusively male society, associating only with others like oneself,” the state counselor mused. “Have you heard that some American millionaire is restoring the biblical Sodom?”

“Yes. An amusing fruit of American didacticism. From the point of view of philanthropy, of course, those millions should have been spent on bread for the poor, but you won’t amaze the world that way. And what good would it do? The poor will eat the free bread and then demand more tomorrow, you can never have enough. But this is a lesson to humanity. Mr. Sairus is a respectable family man and he can’t stand ‘perverts,’ but he wants to show his contemporaries an example of tolerance and compassion for pariahs. Oh, the Americans will teach everyone to be moral, given enough time.”

“No doubt the Sodom project has plenty of enemies?” asked Matvei Bentsionovich, venturing onto his main subject. “Among the prudes and religious fanatics. So many sects have appeared recently, calling for Old Testament–style intolerance.”

From there he was intending to go on to Manuila—to feel out His Excellency’s attitude toward the prophet whom one-eyed Bronek had tried to kill. However, the conversation was interrupted. Filip entered the dining room with a crunch of gleaming leather, bowed, and handed his master a long paper ribbon.

So there was a telegraph in this medieval castle? Somehow the public prosecutor did not find this discovery to his liking.

After running his eyes over the rather long message, Charnokutsky suddenly said to Kesha, “Innocent, you foolish little boy, I’ll have to give you a good whipping. Who is this you have brought?”

The handsome boy with blond hair choked on a segment of orange and Berdichevsky’s heart skipped a beat. He exclaimed in a trembling voice, “What do you mean by that, Count?”

“What an insolent breed you Yids are,” the magnate said, shaking his head, and then spoke no more to Berdichevsky, only to Kesha. “Listen to what Mickey writes: ‘
The provincial marshal of the nobility in Zavolzhsk is Count Rostovsky. The district marshals are Prince Bekbulatov, Baron Stakel-berg Selyaninov, Kotko-Kotkovsky, Lazutin, Prince Vachnadze, Barkhatov, and Count Beznosov, and there are also three districts that do not have a marshal because of the small numbers of nobles there. The individual about whom you inquire does indeed reside in Zavolzhsk, but the name has been confused and the position is incorrect. He is not Matvei Berg-Dichevsky but Matvei Berdichevsky, the district public prosecutor. A state counselor, forty years of age, a baptized Jew
.

The color of Kesha’s cheeks suddenly changed from pink to green. He collapsed onto his knees and sobbed, “I didn’t know a thing about it, I swear!”

The count pushed the boy’s forehead with the toe of his shoe, and Kesha collapsed onto the carpet, sniveling.

“Who sent you this nonsense?” asked Matvei Bentsionovich, who had not yet adjusted to the catastrophic change in the situation. After all, until this moment everything had been going so smoothly!

The count blew out a stream of cigar smoke. He looked the public prosecutor up and down with an expression of curious loathing, as if he were some peculiar insect or a squashed frog. But even so, he condescended to reply, “Mickey, one of ours. An important figure. Any day now he’ll be a minister, and so he should be, he’s a brilliant worker. The kind of man you can send a telegram to at midnight and be sure of finding him in his office.”

This called for an urgent change of tactics—Matvei Bentsionovich had to abandon blunt denial and lay all his cards on the table, as they say. “Well, since you now know that I am a public prosecutor, you should understand that I didn’t come here to play foolish games,” Berdichevsky declared sternly, actually feeling a certain relief that he no longer needed to continue acting out this comedy. “Answer me immediately—was it you who paid off Ratsevich’s debt?”

And then something quite unthinkable happened. Someone seized the state counselor’s elbows from behind and twisted his arms painfully.

“Leave him, Filip,” the count said with a frown. “No need. Let the little Jew crow for a while.”

“There’s something heavy in his pocket,” the lackey explained. “Here.”

Easily clutching both of his prisoner’s wrists in one huge mitt, he took the Lefaucheux out of the public prosecutor’s pocket and handed it to the count.

His master took hold of the revolver with his finger and a thumb, gave it a single quick glance, and tossed it aside with the words, “Cheap garbage!”

Berdichevsky wriggled helplessly in a grip of steel. “Let me go, you villain! I’m a state counselor! I’ll send you to Siberia for this!”

“Let him go,” said Charnokutsky. “The poisoned fang has been drawn, and Yids are not known for their skill in fisticuffs. Do you know, Mr. Jewish Counselor, why I dislike your breed so much? Not because you crucified Christ. He got what he deserved, the Yid. But because you are like women, caricatures of human beings. You only pretend to be men.”

“I am a representative of the authorities!” Matvei Bentsionovich shouted, clutching a numb wrist. “Don’t you dare treat me like—”

“No!” the count interrupted with sudden ferocity. “You are a rat, who has entered my home like a thief. If you weren’t a Yid, I would simply have you thrown out of the gate. But for making me, Charnokutsky, flatter and amuse you for the best part of an hour and feed you thirty-year-old cognac, you will pay with your life. And no one will ever find out. You are not the first, and you will not be the last.”

“You are involved in a criminal case!” Berdichevsky exclaimed, trying to talk some sense into the madman. “I may have come here clandestinely, but I am conducting an important investigation! You are the main suspect! If I don’t go back, the police will be here tomorrow!”

“He’s lying about the investigation,” squeaked Kesha, still not daring to get up off the carpet. “He found out about you from me—he didn’t even know your name before that!”

“What about the coachman?” the public prosecutor reminded him. “He brought me here and went back to town! If I disappear, the coachman will tell the whole story.”

“Who brought you, Innocent?” Charnokutsky asked.

“Semyon. You don’t think I’d use an outsider, do you?”

The count crushed his cigar into an ashtray. Speaking to Matvei Bentsionovich in a respectful tone again, clearly to mock him, he declared merrily, “Our Volynian peasants, who have twelve languages mingled together in their dialect, say, ‘Drive a wolf into a
kut
, and then the creature is kaput.’ Do not be downhearted, Mr. Berdichevsky, do not let that crooked nose of yours droop. There is a long night ahead, and many interesting things in store for you. Now we will go down into the basement, and I will show you the secret part of my collection, the most interesting part. I did not buy the exhibits down there, I made them myself. I cannot add you to the collection—as you saw, I only have women. Although, perhaps, some small piece, by way of an exception?”

An intensive interrogation

GAZING AT HIS prisoner’s expression of horror, the count burst into a fit of his stiff, cackling laughter. “No, not the part that you thought of. That would be a blasphemy against the male body. Innocent, my friend, what do you think of the exhibit ‘a Jewish heart’? In a jar of spirit alcohol, eh?” Charnokutsky walked up to the table, took a peach out of a bowl, and stroked its velvety cheek lovingly.

“No!” he exclaimed, continuing with his jest. “I have a better idea than that! A pound of Jewish flesh!” And he declaimed in English, with an immaculate Eton accent: “An equal pound of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken in what part of your body pleaseth me.’ I will even let you make the choice, which is more than Shylock did for poor Antonio. Where would you prefer?”